Unsurprisingly, the celvusa didn’t retreat.
But it also didn’t respond to her threat. Purple eyes flickered back to hers, holding her stare. She tightened her stance. Terror rang through her ears, fear pounded in her chest, but she didn’t flinch.
The creature’s nose flared, huffing bitter cold air against her face. Its claws dug deeper into the wood, shoulders hunching for an attack.
“No,” she hissed, pulling the dagger closer to her chest. That only invited the creature to take a step toward her, following the dagger.
She should have stepped back. Turned and run. It would give her five more seconds of living over what she was about to do.
Instead, she did the second dumbest thing she’d ever done in her life.
She stepped forward and bared her teeth, snapping each word. “It. Belongs. To. Me.”
And before she knew what happened, she was slammed to the ground by the celvusa’s foot, two claws on either side of her throat, the other two underneath her arms to pin them.
Farrah screamed from somewhere in the room. Elias shouted her name. She lost grip of her other knife as her arms were spread by the impact, but she only held Night Carver more firmly—because the celvusa’s gaze was locked on it.
Brela could feel a sharp sting along her neck, but she couldn’t tell what pooling liquid was her blood and what was the black smoke that dripped from the claw that had cut her. It was all so cold.
Her body was trapped, limbs unable to move with the force that the celvusa held her to the ground. She needed to fight back, not to kill the creature that served the shadow god and that protective wall, but to fight for dominance over the blade that now belonged to her. That’s all it wanted, right? The shards of Veil that were embedded in the hilt? So she had to prove she was worthy of protecting the blade as much as it was.
This was going to cost her, but to keep her father’s dagger, it was worth it.
The celvusa’s cold grip tightened on her, crushing her into the floor and cutting deeper into her neck, but she didn’t give it the satisfaction of hearing her grunt. She closed her eyes and forced that pain down, connecting with the shadow magic inside her chest. She focused on the Veil shard that had given her this magic—not infected,given—because only then would the shadow wolf find her worthy of owning the dagger of her ancestors.
That magic was not a curse. A blessing, just like every other magic user who was blessed with their gifts by the gods.
It wasn’t long after she had escaped Valisea that she had started referring to her magic as a curse, just like everyone else who was afraid of shadow magic. They called it evil, dark,corrupted. She believed them.
Not anymore.
She opened her eyes and challenged the celvusa again. “It belongs to me.”
Glowing purple gazes met.
How much time passed as they stared, she couldn’t tell, but it couldn’t have been long. With the pressure the creature held on her chest, she didn’t have long before she’d lose consciousness. Hells, she would be frozen in another minute.
The shadow wolf didn’t lift its foot when it finally admitted she was worthy. The black, swirling body simply ceased to exist in wolf form. That liquid smoke curled in the air above Brela, shining black and purple, alive and mesmerizing as it carried out the broken window that it had entered.
It was only once the celvusa was gone that Brela gasped for breath, throwing her right hand over the gash along her neck just above the Veil shard that still tingled with cold. Her left arm lifted above her face, fingers white and shaking from gripping Night Carver so tightly.
The Veil Scholar’s daggerbelonged to her.
Her arm dropped to the ground as Farrah and Elias sprinted into view, and all she could do was laugh.
3
The Fire Wielder
Captain Cason Valkip despised festivals, especially ones that happened in other kingdoms because he wasn’t in charge of security. There were too many people, all potential threats to his friend Serill, the Crown Prince of Severina. Any one of those individuals dancing in the crowd or serving food could be hiding a weapon other than magic somewhere on their person. The smallest blade or poison could be stashed in those outfits, even if the fabrics barely covered their extremities. And the incompetent Rooke Guard had seemingly taken the night off to join the festivities.
As if the crowds weren’t bad enough, there was so much distracting noise. Banging drums and clattering music echoed off the mountains and rustled through the trees. Cason was already on high alert, but his sharp sun-blessed senses that were typically proactive were forced to react. His protective affinity still served him well, despite the crowd. Though the Prince was sitting to his right and took up most of his attention, he could sense every movement within ten feet of their table. His hand hovered over his sword, gripping the hilt every time someone toed the protective lines he had established.
But every movement across the threshold that alerted him to possible danger was simply a stray Rooke citizen dancing. The men would bow politely to the royal family, fists held firm over their bare chests, the majority of which were covered with tattoos that marked their strength of god-blessed magic. Most were decorated with earth symbols, but there were still a few who bore moon or sun magic ink next to their earth-blessed marks.
The men didn’t stay long, mostly because Crown Princess Merelina had recently announced her engagement to a noble from the earth temple. The men had better luck of finding someone in the crowd. There were definitely enough people here for options.
The women, in their traditional green silk skirts and revealing corsets, would bat their eyelashes toward their tables and then twirl away, trying to catch the eyes of the line of princes at the table. Cason noticed that the less tattoos the women had etched in their skin—the weaker magic they possessed—the more clothing they wore. Those women also rarely came close to the table, nor did any of the women who had the artwork of other gods-blessed magic, perhaps because the Rooke royals were known for being…pickyabout their marriage prospects.
